Candidates

Marc Balmer

First of all, I want to express that I am surprised that I was nominated, it was not myself who nominated me, but the fact alone that someone nominated me means that someone wants me to serve on X.Org's board and I am willing and capable to take the challenge, provided, of course, that enough X.Org members see me as a valuable member of the X.Org board of directors.

I am a Swiss citizen, 44 years old, living in the canton Aargau. I am an entrepreneur, running the software development and consulting firm micro systems, www.msys.ch, successfully for more than twenty years.

I am a former lecturor and member of the board of the HyperWerk Institute of the Basel University of Applied Science, where I tought general informatics and man/machine interaction.

: Since many years I give a lecture about "Open Source Software as a Reality in Commercial Software Development" at the University of Basel, which invites me as a long-standing open source defender/user/developer.

: In my commercial life I do point of sale systems, for which use X11 on touchscreen systems to interact with the cashier. I am an IBM business partner and my work with X.Org and touchscreens yielded me an IBM 2010 "Newcomer Award". IBM is seeing the potential in X.Org and Open Source, obviously.

: I am an active BSD Unix developer, focusing on NetBSD, but with having lots of code in OpenBSD and some in FreeBSD, and with very tight connections to the *BSD development teams in general.

: I helped with with making X.Org drivers available and working on various BSD platforms, most notable the AMD Geode on OpenBSD, but also support for various touchscreen drivers.

: If I am to be elected to the X.Org board of directors, I will first and of all help my colleagues to get the tasks at hand to be handled. But I will also see my role as a janitor reminding the X.Org community that the world is not only i386 and Linux, but that systems like the *BSD Unixes use and need X11 as well. And that some coordination between X.Org and the BSD's is needed.

: As a personal reference I would like to mention Matthieu Herrb, who is currently serving on board, and who knows my past in BSD and X.Org quite well.

Alex Deucher

Current Affiliation

AMD

Statement of Contribution

I've been working on Xorg video drivers for many years. I now work at AMD supporting the open source driver stack and helping provide chipset documentation for AMD hardware.

Personal Statement

The X Window System has interested me since I first saw screen shots of X window managers back in 1997. I got actively involved in X around 2000 and my interest and participation has grown from there. I now work for AMD supporting open source software on AMD graphics hardware. Prior to starting at AMD, I worked in telecom engineering and intellectual property risk management. My current focus has been on 2D and 3D driver support and documentation for AMD hardware. I have previously contributed to a number of other X drivers including drivers for hardware from S3 and Siliconmotion and mentored several Google and Xorg summer of code projects.

I joined the X.Org Foundation Board of Directors in 2009. During my time on the board, I spearheaded the 501(c)3 non-profit application, handled our Delaware tax filings, and was the election chair for the 2010 Board election. I would like to continue my work on the board: see the 501(c)3 process finished, encourage more projects like the Xorg Endless Vacation of Code, and perhaps even organize an Xorg Developers conference.

Matt Dew

Current Affiliation

Micron

Statement of Contribution

I do the work that noone else wants to do, like cleaning up documentation. I care about the project and want to see it become better, not just go into a holding pattern until Wayland takes over.

I also am involved with GSoC and EVoC trying to bring in new, young blood into X.org.

Personal Statement

Although I have followed X.org activity for almost 10 yrs now, I have only been contributing to X.org for 2 years. However I really want to help the project overall. As my coding skills are rudimentary compared to fulltime coders and I'm not lucky enough to be employed to work on X, I contribute the best way I feel I can; by working on the not-so-sexy aspects of X.org, like documentation, whenever I can. For the past 2 years I've been working on cleaning up the in-tree documentation, starting with converting 40 documents (>2000 pgs) from various formats like Framemaker and groff into one common format, docbook. Last summer I started getting involved with GSoc and EVoC trying to get students involved in X.org.

: I've recently taken over the EVoC duties from Bart Massey. In doing so, I've started pinging the local Unis to drum up interest among the bright students. I would very much like to see more public noise around the project and to generate interest amongst the bright recent college grads. If I were elected to the board, I would try to help move the project in that direction.

: Humble thanks for your consideration.

Matthias Hopf

Current Affiliation

Georg-Simon-Ohm-University

Statement of Contribution

Working on radeonhd (one of the principal authors), R[67]xx bringup, RandR (1.3, specifically), general Xserver fixes.

Personal Statement

I'm active in X development since 2005. Being one of the principal authors of radeonhd, I helped jump-starting development for modern ATI (now AMD) graphics chips, and did major work for the 3D bringup of this chipset family. For SUSE I was mainly working on stabilizing the Xserver and drivers to get enterprise quality in our products, upstream I'm trying hard to foster new and fancy developments that do not conflict with backwards compatibility too much. I strongly believe that the notion of Open Source software does not only have to be reflected by licenses, but also by communication structures. The board irc logs, published on the freedesktop wiki, are one fine example for open communication. I'm also a strong advocate of Google SoC and X.org's participation therein.

In September 2011 I changed my profession and I'm now lecturing and researching at the Georg-Simon-Ohm University of Applied Science in Nuremberg, Germany. My lectures will have a strong focus on Open Source technologies, and of course I'm promoting the use of Linux or Un*x-alike operating systems including the X11 technologies amongst our students.

Jeremy Huddleston

Current Affiliation

Apple Inc

Statement of Contribution

My role within X.org has primarily been that of developer and release manager. I am the principle maintainer of the XQuartz Project, and by extension the XQuartz DDX within xorg-server, the AppleWM protocol, and quartz-wm. In recent cycles, I have been the release manager for the stable branches of xorg-server.

Personal Statement

I am honored to be nominated for a position on the X.org Board of Directors. I have enjoyed working with the community as a developer and maintainer of the stable branch of the X.org server and would be delighted to serve on the board. As a board member, I would love to be more involved with Summer of Code. SoC offers us a great opportunity to bring in new talent and support students in their own personal development. Our involvement with SoC has been quite beneficial, but we have room to improve. We can do a better job at matching students with mentors/support, and we need to improve the publication of results for the SoC projects. As a board member, I would like to address these concerns and work with the community to make our SoC involvement even better than it currently is. Thank you for your consideration.

Keith Packard

Current Affiliation

Intel

Statement of Contribution

Have written a bit of X server code over the years, designed and wrote a few extensions that add nice features to the window system.

Personal Statement

The X.org board continues to perform an important role in the X community. Over the last couple of years, the primary activities of the board have involved organizing technical conferences and providing funding for developers to attend both those conferences and other important free software conferences around the world. I've been involved in the board since the reformation of the X.org foundation as treasurer or as a board member. If elected, I will work to continue offering opportunities for X developers to meet around the world.